Aussies have criticised the taxpayer-funded ABC over a clip showing school students re-designing the Australian flag without the Union Jack.
The video was posted to the national broadcaster’s social media channels to promote the third season of a show called “Stuff the British Stole”, hosted by Marc Fennell.
It shows students from Perth Modern School in Western Australia taking part in an exercise designing new Australian flags which they said represented “modern” multicultural Australia, none of which included the Union Jack.
View this post on Instagram
One student said the current flag “doesn’t feel distinctly Australian”, an Asian teen added “I guess we just don’t associate ourselves with the British that much, in modern Australia”, while others remarked the flag “doesn’t really feel like us as a nation anymore” and “we need to be more inclusive”.
The video, posted without the full context of the episode, sparked intense criticism online, with many saying it was far-left anti-Australian propaganda.
Independent journalist and political commentator Drew Pavlou said the clip was “pretty disrespectful to millions of Australians whose British ancestors built the nation and died fighting under that flag”.
“Unfortunately high levels of migration have opened up a distinct break in Australian history and culture, where many children of migrants sadly exhibit feelings of cold indifference towards the people who founded the nation,” he wrote.
“And then the publicly funded national broadcaster weaponises this for leftist political agitation.”
Australia’s public broadcaster ABC is running an anti-British show called “STUFF THE BRITISH STOLE.”
As part of the show they interview a group of predominantly Asian Australian school students who want to change the Australian flag to erase the British Union Jack.
These… pic.twitter.com/tApmu5lgBj
— Drew Pavlou 🇦🇺🇺🇸🇺🇦🇹🇼 (@DrewPavlou) June 30, 2026
They’re teaching Australian kids to hate their flag. Look at the watermark “stuff the British stole” ffs pic.twitter.com/38R8TAJAYy
— Retard Finder (@IfindRetards) June 30, 2026
Others wrote “they’re teaching Australian kids to hate their flag” and “the ABC is a disgrace and needs to be defunded”.
The full episode, titled “Flag Fall,” premiered on ABC TV on June 9, and traced the flag of England to Genoa, Italy, and explored claims that England “stole” the flag during the Crusades.
Fennell later asked the students: “Does that mean that we, as Australians, are guilty of receiving stolen goods?”
Historians in the episode disagreed over this, and later in the episode concluded that the theory was false.
“In the end, I don’t think you can say that the flag was stolen”, Fennell concluded.
The episode also featured commentary on the flag’s modern meaning, including from one man who said the British flag had become a “divisive” and “unpleasant symbol” used to express anti-immigration sentiment.
“Stuff the British Stole” is a documentary series that investigates objects allegedly “stolen” by the British Empire, and is a co-production between the ABC and the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, with funding from Screen Australia, Screenwest, Lotterywest and VicScreen.
Header image: A design featured in the clip (ABC).
